Take Control of Your Restaurant’s Employee Turnover

Irish hospitality businesses are facing a growing problem when it comes to employee turnover and retention. Currently most businesses have a growing employee turnover rate, which can make it a real challenge to retain staff. Subsequently this can cause numerous issues for your business; understaffing being just one of these issues. Of course, some amount of turnover is unavoidable. However, there are both direct and residual effects if you have a high turnover rate.

Employee Morale
If you have a revolving door of staff, this can seriously impact employee morale. Nobody likes to see their co-workers constantly leaving and it can make them question if they should leave too. As well as this, it leads to a loss in engagement, and an overall loss in productivity in your remaining staff.

Costs
It is estimated that losing an entry-level employee can cost your business up to 50% of their annual salary. This could be due to the loss in productivity mentioned above or hiring costs. It takes both time and money to find new staff. Time spent looking for a replacement, reading through piles of CVs, conducting interviews, etc; and that’s just the time allocated to hiring. It then takes time to train in your new staff.

What are the main causes of employee turnover?
There are a number of reasons that employees can leave a company; and some of them are unavoidable. However, a lot of them can be prevented or circumvented. Some of the major causes of turnover are:

(Bad) Management – most people don’t quit a company but rather quit their boss

Lack of growth and progression

Team members being treated differently or held to different standards

Being overworked

Lack of recognition or feedback

Prevent High Staff Turnover
Thankfully there are solutions that can help prevent the loss of staff resulting from these causes. One of the biggest methods of prevention is to properly train your managers to deal with employees. Another method is to be careful with who you place in managerial positions. For example, someone with a short temper might not be able to deal with numerous employees and stressful issues that may arise.

Reward Your Staff
Rewarding your staff and offering them training opportunities should help with some of the other causes of turnover such as lack of recognition. Try holding team building days or, if this isn’t possible, consider trying stress-relieving exercises before the start of service. It may be a good idea to invite employees to discuss issues or concerns before the beginning of service and having a comment box so more sensitive issues can be voiced in private.

Create an Employee Retention Strategy
The main thing is to place some employee retention strategy in place so that you stop losing staff and start promoting engagement. According to Gallup, the U.S., researched based, global performance management consulting company, employees who are “engaged and thriving” are 59% less likely to look for a job with a different organisation in the next year. Engaging your employees and catering to their needs is paramount to retaining staff. It’s very important to nurture your employee’s well-being, to try and spread work evenly across all staff, and promote a good work/life balance.

How Do You Fund Your Retention Strategy?
You know that implementing an employee retention strategy will save you money in the long term, but what can you do if you don’t have the funds available right now? GRID Finance offers a business loan that is specifically designed for the hospitality industry. Its flexible repayments are designed to work with your existing credit/debit card machine, to take a small percentage of your card takings. This means there’s never a strain on your cash flow so you can keep running your business the way you want to.